Galaxy Map

Star Central Visitors can fly starships to a dozen places in the nearby galaxy or visit areas of Star Central to learn about the Milky Way including the Star Cinema, a walkable galactic atlas or various 3D models.

Would love it if people would like the Star Central VR world here:

devpost.com/software/sta...

People are signing up for the VR starship tour to Naos (Zeta Puppis). This will involve travel to Naos, a look at the star from the star station observation deck, a talk about the star in the cartography room and a visit to the annotated sky view before returning to Star Central.

By the way, if there are astronomers out there that want to lead VR tours to their favourite places in the Milky Way, please contact me and we can arrange something.

Defining the solar neighbourhood here as the region out to 1000 parsecs.

Trivia question: there is one star in the solar neighbourhood that is believed to be even more luminous than Naos. Does anyone know its name?

Travel with us to Naos Come with us on a starship journey to one of the brightest stars in the solar neighborhood, the O4-type blue supergiant Naos (Zeta Puppis). Learn about this star's role in the Vel OB2 association and....

The tour is on November 11. You can sign up here if you'd like to join: horizon.meta.com/event/172889...

Works on mobile or in a VR headset.

People are signing up for the VR starship tour to Naos (Zeta Puppis). This will involve travel to Naos, a look at the star from the star station observation deck, a talk about the star in the cartography room and a visit to the annotated sky view before returning to Star Central.

Intern in the Science Engagement and Oversight Office, Astrophysics Section Intern in the Science Engagement and Oversight Office, Astrophysics Section

Here's a fantastic opportunity for a university student to work on outreach for cutting edge astronomical research: Gaia DR4.

I'd argue that the Gaia Mission should have had a full time person in this role since before 2018, but at least this is something, right?

jobs.esa.int/job/Noordwij...

Travel with us to Naos Come with us on a starship journey to one of the brightest stars in the solar neighborhood, the O4-type blue supergiant Naos (Zeta Puppis). Learn about this star's role in the Vel OB2 association and....

Now that I've launched Star Central, I thought that I'd try organizing an event in the world. In this case, it is a tour group travelling via starship to Naos (Zeta Puppis).

Up to 15 people can visit this world at once. So we'll see who turns up!

horizon.meta.com/event/172889...

Horizon Worlds lets you organize events in your world. I am thinking of organizing a tour group to Zeta Puppis, one of the more interesting relatively nearby stars. Will probably happen in a week or two.

Star Central Visitors can fly starships to a dozen places in the nearby galaxy or visit areas of Star Central to learn about the Milky Way including the Star Cinema, a walkable galactic atlas or various 3D models.

For the curious, you can read some of my contest entry here: devpost.com/software/sta...

Life in the Universe - Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut. Haus der Kultur. Are we alone in the universe? This question has always fascinated people. Now we can approach it in a scientific …

Excited to speak this coming Tuesday at the DAI in Heidelberg! I'm hosting a panel discussion on life in the universe - from the origin of life on Earth, to how we could recognize it on other planets, to prospects for interstellar space travel. Tickets on sale now: dai-heidelberg.de/en/events/li...

The world is entered into a contest which means that I can't change it for a few weeks but I am happy to get constructive feedback. I plan to keep developing it and hope to incorporate Gaia DR4 data in 2026 and 2027.

YouTube video by Kevin Jardine Star Central

Trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmbR...

Star Central Travel and learn about the Milky Way. Still in beta.

My huge new Star Central world is now officially launched. You can visit it in mobile or VR here: horizon.meta.com/world/775774...

In fact the real story of this election is how well the far right and right wing parties have maintained their vote despite how badly they performed in the last government. Competence no longer matters in the Netherlands.

I assume that the Guardian is promoting this as a feel-good story for their centrist readership. In reality D66 only did well in this election because of a collapse in the vote for the centre left Green-Labour coalition. It is not that the Dutch electorate as a whole is becoming more centrist.

If you want to understand Dutch politics, looking at who has the most votes on a list of 14 parties (or whoever made the cut this time) is not going to give you much insight.

The Dutch electorate is bitterly divided between far right, right and centrist factions. And actually the vote essentially just moved around between parties in each of these factions. So forming a government is going to be very difficult.

So tired to see headlines like this. The Netherlands does not have a first-past-the-post system and after the last election there were 14 parties in the parliament. Even the largest party has a small fraction of the vote. There are no "winners" in Dutch elections.

Here's what I have for the full trailer. Please tell me what you think.

I use Windows Subsystem for Linux and am delighted to have Ubuntu as my command line but bad, weird and inconsistent user interfaces is the main reason why I never made the full transition to Linux and I don't want GIMP to impose a Linux UI on me. Sorry.

I realize that the core GIMP developers are not that interested in Windows but there have always been a few that just made it work. They seem to have given up for version 3. The file management is just weird. The files are sorted in reverse order with directories interspersed and it is *slow*.

I might look at the new all-in-one Affinity app next week.

I've been a loyal GIMP user for years but have been disappointed with the new version 3.

Experimenting with an intro to the Star Central trailer. Here is what I have so far. The video tools in Horizon Worlds are limited so I had to improvise.

Star Central is really just a star cadet training centre as I wish it could be. VR helps my dreams become a little more real. Here are some scenes around the walkable galactic atlas which you can visit with a mobile phone or (better) a VR headset.

Done coding the Star Central VR world for now. Today I am collecting video clips and screen shots for the trailer.

I love the name of Hank Green's science content creation company, Complexly.

It reminds us in its very name that the goal of science communication should not be to make science simple but to take inherently complex topics and explain them as clearly as possible. Never talk down to your audience.

So exciting that in the age of Gaia it is now possible to put together a fascinating 20 minute video on a single star (well actually 3 stars as you will find out in the video) with such rich detail. I would love to see more star videos.

YouTube video by Astrum Why Polaris Is the Most Confusing Star in the Sky

My wife and I often watch science videos on YouTube, especially from Hank Green's Complexly empire and paleontology news from Moth Light Media and Ben G. Thomas and friends.

Yesterday we watched a wonderful video on Polaris on the Astrum channel:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTX6...